Artists who made history

Artists who made history

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The Siege of Paris and earthquakes in Mexico

Max Pearson presents a collection of this week's Witness History episodes.We hear a survivor's incredible archive account of living through the Siege of Paris in 1870. Sydney Snell was in her 80s when she recorded her memories with the BBC in 1946.Our guest Professor Beatrice Heu ...  Show more

The Berlin Wall mural and a new kind of zoo

Max Pearson presents a collection of this week's Witness History episodes.American artist Keith Haring's bold 1986 mural on the Berlin Wall and British naturalist Gerald Durrell's 1950s mission to save species from extinction.We discuss other examples of art which aim to bring pe ...  Show more

Recommended Episodes

Pablo Picasso
Short History Of...

Pablo Picasso was one of the most celebrated and radical artists of the 20th century. His styles shocked and outraged contemporaries, and are still instantly recognisable today. But while the artist was publicly fêted, behind closed doors there was a darker side, and many of his ...  Show more

Picasso
Witness History: Archive 2011

Sixty years ago a young art historian got to know the greatest painter in the world.John Richardson met Picasso in the South of France in 1951.Photo: AFP/Getty 

Meeting Picasso
Witness History

In the summer of 1951 a young art historian called John Richardson met one of the greatest painters of the modern era. Richardson was part of Picasso's circle in the South of France for the rest of the 1950s and then spent the rest of his life writing the definitive biography of ...  Show more